Olney Friends School

Filmmaker Ian Cheney will screen his award-winning full-length feature documentary about light pollution, “The City Dark,” at Olney Friends School on Saturday, February 18 at 7:30 p.m. in the Collection Room of the Main Building. He will introduce the film, which will be followed by a question-and-answer period. The event is free and open to the public.

Cheney grew up in rural Maine, later moving to New York City. He writes of the film’s origin this way: “Spending a lot of my childhood in rural Maine, I fell in love with the night sky and wanted to try and capture it as best I could. I used a Pentax camera borrowed from my Dad, a high school photography teacher, and experimented with different long exposures using an unforgivable amount of Dad’s Kodak Gold film. And spending so many nights out under the stars, I became something of an amateur astronomer as a teenager, even building my own telescope out of an old cardboard construction tube.

“But as I grew up and spent more and more time in cities, my connection to the stars faded…. With so few of us growing up with a connection to the stars, might we be losing something rather fundamental? The more I thought about it, the more I felt I had lost something—something I couldn’t put my finger on.”

The film won the Jury Prize for Best Score/Music at the South by Southwest Film Festival. Its opening was noted in the New Yorker; and it was recently reviewed favorably in the New York Times.

Cheney’s other films include “King Corn” and “Big River” (modern farming), “The Greening of Southie” (green building in Boston), and “Truck Farm” (just what it sounds like: a minute farm in the truck bed of Cheney’s ‘86 Dodge pickup). He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Yale University

Jon Watts’s music can be difficult to categorize. He started as a hip-hop artist. Other genres often mentioned include videography (he has his own YouTube channel), spoken word art, and yes, the history and worship of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). In Watts’s own words, “the music is young and current, rap-inspired, deeply intimate and profoundly spiritual.”

The public is invited to an evening with Jon Watts on Friday, February 17, beginning at 8:00 p.m. in the Collection Room in the Main Building. The event is free of charge.

Watts lives in Philadelphia, where he moved to be closer to a youth movement among Quakers. He grew up in the Religious Society of Friends in Richmond, Virginia. He graduated from Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina.

John Mattox will speak on the local history of the Underground Railroad at Olney Friends School on Friday, February 24 at 7:00 p.m. in the Collection Room of the Main Building. His talk is free and open to the public.

Mattox is the curator of the Underground Railroad Museum in Flushing, Ohio. He attended Houston Tillitson College in Austin, Texas and majored in sociology and psychology. He has served on numerous local, state, and national boards.

Of the museum’s vision, he writes, “We want to share our knowledge of the Underground Railroad and the thousands of slaves that escaped the brutal effects of slavery in the South. We want to preserve and support our culture and community by contributing to a better quality of life in the 21st century.”

Mattox will discuss the Underground Railroad movement in Wheeling. He will bring maps showing areas of activity of the railroad in the 1800s; and he will answer questions after his talk.

Mattox’s presentation is part of the recognition and celebration of Black History Month at Olney Friends School. Students will spend the class day prior to Mattox’s talk in a variety of activities and discussions about African Americans and their struggles and contributions.

Olney Friends School is proud to announce the acceptance of junior Rory Huang by Bard College. Huang was accepted through Bard’s early admission program –which provides an opportunity for students with exceptionally strong high school records to begin college before finishing high school.

Huang, originally from Shanghai, China, plans to major in East Asian Studies. “I always wanted to go to a liberal arts college,” she explained. “Bard’s early admission program was perfect for me.”

She will begin her studies at Bard at the end of January. Bard’s College at Simon’s Rock is located in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

After attending another boarding school in Arizona, Huang was attracted to Olney Friends School because of the strong academic program. “I always wanted to study Advanced Placement,” she said. “Here I got the chance.”

In particular, Huang valued the humanities curriculum at Olney. Her favorite teacher, she said, was Daniel Raffety, who taught the 11th-grade Humanities course, a core course focusing on the history, literature, and geography of the ancient world.

In addition to her studies, Huang enjoyed participating in Olney’s Mid-Autumn Festival. Every fall, Asian students come together to cook food and celebrate the changing seasons together.

Although she is excited to begin college, Huang says she will miss her friends at Olney. “I like Olney because of the people and the atmosphere,” she said. “I’m happy I got to go here.”

With students from 12 states and 10 countries, it is easy to forget that Olney Friends School has many students from the local area. Sophomore Hunter Keller from Wheeling, West Virginia notes that despite having students from all over the world, “Olney students share the same values, and that’s what brings us together.” Keller is a boarding student.

Junior Kerri Rogers, whose family lives in nearby Bethesda, Ohio, agrees. “Even though we’re from all over,” Rogers says, “I like the fact that we are able to come together and recognize and respect each other.” Rogers is a day student.

At Olney, students are able to pursue their diverse interests with the support of their peers. Rogers has a passion for biology and wants to study veterinary medicine after graduating from Olney. Keller is interested in psychology, art, and music, and thinks about becoming an artist or psychologist. Freshman Kayla Kellar from Senecaville, Ohio enjoys studying geometry and biology and is considering a career in engineering. Kellar is a day student.

Local students – whether they are day students or boarders – have a unique outlook on Olney as they are more familiar than their classmates with rural Ohio and West Virginia, yet at the same time are vibrant members of the Olney community. Keller says that regardless of where someone is from “everyone at Olney is very friendly.”

Growing up in Wheeling, Keller says she “only ever heard positive things about the school.” Similarly, Junior Kerri Rogers comments that some local residents have warm feelings for Olney because they visit the school’s booth at Barnesville’s annual pumpkin festival. “They’ll say, ‘I love this place. We buy pumpkin bread there.’”

Keller relates that local students sometimes have a different perspective than those from other parts of the country or the world. “One time it was the first snow of the year,” she recalled, “and my friend Arbash [Nazeer] was jumping up and down and we didn’t understand why. It turned out he had never seen snow before because he grew up in Saudi Arabia.”

Kellar thinks that the school’s community service programs are an important way of creating a closer school-town relationship. Olney was the recipient of the Barnesville Community Service Award last year. Students at Olney are required to perform 40 hours of community service in order to graduate. In past years students have earned hours helping tutoring at Barnesville Middle School and working with local senior citizens.

Another opportunity for school-town cooperation is the annual planting of trees on former strip mining sites around Barnesville by the Barnesville Area Reforestation Kommittee, or BARK. Each spring, Olney students pick up shovels and go to work spreading seedlings to help improve the local environment.

Environmental stewardship is only one of the Quaker values promoted at Olney. Equally important at Olney are integrity and community. “Olney isn’t judgmental,” Kellar says. “Most of all, it’s a place where people are open to learning.”

The public is invited to an open house at Olney Friends School on Saturday, October 22.

Sample classes will be offered at 9:00 a.m. and campus tours at 10:00 a.m. Class offerings will include Spanish language and culture (titled “Qué salsa!”); The Mathematics of Probability; and an overview of the Olney farm and how it is integrated into the school’s college preparatory curriculum. All classes will be held in the Main Building.

In a separate event, the local community is invited to meet Charlie and Susan Szumilas at a 7:00 p.m. reception in the Main Building. Charlie Szumilas began as head of school July 1.

Head of School Charlie Szumilas wrote recently to alumni and friends regarding the new teachers for 2011-2012:

“Over the summer, we have added a number of new faces to our faculty.

“Ted Cooley from Brasstown in southwestern North Carolina brings a wide array of talents with a focus on Appalachian arts. He has a master’s degree in storytelling, has performed in theater productions (as far away as Poland) since his teenage years, plays guitar, sings and dances, and works in clay.

“Dan Raffety is a New Englander who is coming to us from New Jersey to teach humanities classes, including junior Humanities and an introduction to drama. Dan recently completed a master’s degree program at St. John’s College in Santa Fe that is known as one of the country’s premier programs in the reading of the Great Books.

“Steve Martin is known to the Olney community; he is the husband of librarian Anne Marie Taber and stepfather to junior Daniel Washburn. Steve is a qualified, hands-on physicist and a former collegiate gymnast, and he will be teaching two levels of physics, calculus and statistics.

“Quan Xu (pronounced Choo-wen Shoo) has joined us from China and will be teaching a class in Mandarin Chinese, helping our students from China with their English assignments, and serving as a member of the dorm staff. She is a delightful addition to our faculty and comes to us through our friend, benefactor and alumnus, David Edmondson ‘63, who has promoted our Chinese connections for several years.

“Camilo Matos is a Friend from eastern Pennsylvania who signed on as a residential life intern. He will live in the boys dorm and assist with drama productions and perhaps with singing groups because he is blessed with perfect pitch.

“I am excited about the possibilities that each of our new teachers brings to the program.”

Rosa Shull ‘09 of Jerusalem, Ohio, died Tuesday, August 2, 2011, at the Cleveland Clinic.

Rosa was born in Vishny Volochek, Russia on July 5, 1991. She was adopted by her parents, Robert Shull and Beverly Kirk Shull ‘68, from a Russian orphanage at age 5.

Rosa is survived by many loving family members, including her sister, Meredith Shull ’05, her parents, and her grandmother Marie Kirk Hawkins ’44. A memorial service was held on Saturday, August 6, 2011 at Stillwater Friends Meeting House in Barnesville, Ohio.

Memorial contributions may be made in Rosa’s name to Olney Friends School, 61830 Sandy Ridge Road, Barnesville, OH 43713.

Bringing a philosophy of community music-making, the members of the New River Trio will perform the aptly-chosen folk song, “New River Train,” at a concert at Olney Friends School on Tuesday, July 19 beginning at 7:30 p.m. in the Main Building.

Members of the trio are Brendan Cooney, classical and jazz pianist; Martha Hyde, clarinetist/composer/ vocalist, and Lisa Liske-Doorandish, cellist.

The three have been teaching at Friends Music Camp each summer in Barnesville, Ohio, on the Olney Friends School campus, for more than a dozen years. They report that finding occasions to rehearse and perform as a trio is challenging given their disparate locations – in Boston, New York City, and Virginia – so they make use of every free moment together each summer at Olney.

The three musicians bring to their shared work complementary successes in the musical world.

Cooney is a pianist, banjoist, trombonist, composer and teacher living in Boston. He previously taught jazz at Germantown Friends School and Friends Select School, both in Philadelphia. Next up, he plans to launch a web site to publish his numerous pieces for student choirs and instrumental combinations.

Hyde is a multiple woodwind player who has lived in New York City for more than 30 years. She appears regularly in Broadway pits and at Radio City Music Hall. Her compositions span the styles of American jazz and classical and Appalachian music.

Liske-Doorandish lives in the mountains of southwest Virginia. She teaches cellists ages three through adult at her studio, Community Cello Works. She is on the faculty of Hollins University and performs regularly throughout the region.

All three happen to be Quaker. Cooney graduated from Westtown School, a Quaker boarding and day school near Philadelphia. He first came to Friends Music Camp as a student in the late1980s – where he studied jazz piano with Hyde as his teacher.

Hyde, for her part, grew up in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Her first visit to the Olney Friends School campus came when she was four years old, on a family summer trip to a Quaker gathering in Barnesville.

Liske-Doorandish is a member of Blacksburg Monthly Meeting, a local Quaker congregation in Virginia. She grew up in Kent, and she previously taught at Olney Friends School.

The three cemented their partnership and first performed as a trio at Friends Music Camp four years ago.

Their performance on Tuesday, July 19 will be one of a dozen or more pieces in the final concert lineup featuring a range of classical, folk, and contemporary pieces by various members of Friends Music Camp staff, who hail from a wide range of distinguished backgrounds in teaching and performance. Additional concerts are Wednesday, July 27 and Tuesday, August 2. Each recital begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Collection Room of the Main Building. They are free and open to the public.

How do you know when summer has arrived in earnest at Olney Friends School? When the sounds of strings, woodwinds, brass, piano, and vocal music fill the air for four weeks without ceasing, of course! The source of all this joyful commotion is Friends Music Camp, which will bring 82 students ages 10-18 from 16 states and 4 countries (Canada, Costa Rica, Japan, Kenya) to Barnesville beginning this weekend.

This summer marks the thirty-second annual Friends Music Camp at Olney Friends School. The camp blends individual lessons, practice time, classes, ensemble work, and other more traditional summer camp activities. While the camp is based on a Quaker educational philosophy, students and staff come from all different faith traditions.

For the public, the highlight is undoubtedly the staff recitals, which occur on alternate Tuesday and Wednesday evenings in July and early August. Where else can one enjoy a unique blend of classical, contemporary, and folk instrumental and vocal performances – without cost and sometimes without a great deal of advance notice of the program?

“There are always surprises,” says Nick Hutchinson, co-director of the camp. “Our staff has an amazing variety of musical talents, and they love to share them with the camp and the community.”

Staff recital dates are the following: Wednesday, July 13; Tuesday, July 19; Wednesday, July 27; and Tuesday, August 2. Each recital begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Collection Room of the Main Building. Recitals are free and open to the public.

The visiting musicians who spend their summers teaching music in Barnesville hail from a wide variety of performance backgrounds. Some freelance in Boston, New York, and Chicago; others teach at colleges and universities in the Midwest and Northeast. This year, there are five members of the Barnesville community on staff: Carolyn Stanley, Clyde Tipton, Ela Robertson, Bill Cullingford, and Jerry King.